…ideas from Jeffery Giesener – SourceMob.com – CEO
Engagement requires a soft touch, not a hard sell.
Companies who are succeeding in recruiting on social networks have developed a sourcing strategy which looks more like customer service than a typical recruiting model and focuses on a conversational approach to luring top talent–many of whom are Passive candidates.
Three Phases to Accomplishing a Successful Sourcing Strategy
- Establishing Social Career Pages on the key social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or Mobile) accomplishes a successful social recruitment position statement to potential candidates
- Make your Social Career Pages interesting, collaborative and ready to drive relevant content frequently enough to stimulate ongoing conversations with your potential candidates
- Grow your Social Fan Base.
What is important to realize is that a conversation is not an application. It is just what it sounds like… a conversation. Passive candidates increasingly want to “test the waters” first by getting to know your company, the recruiter and your company culture before stepping into the formal application process. Not to mention they want to stay off the recruiting radar until they are ready to make the first move. This is why it is important to have a conversation mechanism in place SourcePools so your recruiters can engage with these candidates.
So How Do You Start?
Simply start by creating or selecting a conversational topic on your Social Career Centers that’s relevant to your audience. It doesn’t have to be job related. But it should be interesting enough to elicit comments from your target audiences. Then make sure you respond to their comments including finding others (inside and outside the company) that can contribute to the conversation.
Don’t be so overt to sell your jobs. That comes later because anyone interested in a job will already have applied. What you’re looking to do is hook those Passive candidates into having relevant conversations and get them to identify themselves. This strategy is the cornerstone to building SourcePools™ or talent communities around your job categories. But remember: building conversations and engagement with Passive candidates comes first, takes time, and needs a level of excitement and energy from your Talent Acquisition Team to come across as being credible.
Remember that luring Passive Candidates into a more substantial conversation is the key goal. These conversations need to be nurtured over a period of time that fits within the Candidates timeline–not yours. If things feel right for them, they will apply in their own time.
Social networks have dramatically jump started the process of recruiting through the exponential growth of conversations, the cascading distribution of your job content, and the viral leverage of sharing. Plus, Social Recruitment is now bringing down the cost of recruiting–especially for Passive candidates.
In a recent survey from The AList of some 1,800 candidates, about half the respondents claimed that they found their last job through connections made through social networks, mainly by tapping friends and relatives. Interestingly, a majority of those that found jobs in this manner also reported higher levels of satisfaction with their jobs. The likely reason is that they had more and better insights into the job than they would have otherwise.
For an employer wanting to tap social networks, the approach should be to draw people into conversations, which drives engagement with your Candidates.
Key Findings from The AList Study
- Networking/Social Media has become the most effective way for landing a job
- Despite LinkedIn’s apparent popularity among recruiters, job hunters succeed at finding a job more through Facebook and other Social Network channels
- Social Media hires tend to have a higher job satisfaction, feel more informed about the company prior to accepting the job, and show longer retention cycles
At SourceMob we can easily and quickly help you broaden your Talent Acquisition strategy to include Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Mobile, via your own online Social and Mobile Career Center (which we build for you). And we do this without involving your IT Team and their budget, or your HR management resources. In fact, SourceMob’s Recruiting and Conversational solutions basically run on autopilot. We also provide you Talent Communities (we call them SourcePools) capturing relevant job category conversations, which reduce your hiring cycle time and your cost per hire.
To learn more check out our video at sourcemob.com. For a virtual or personal presentation simply ring me up at 612-249-2740 or email me at jeff@sourcemob.com
Looking forward to hearing from you,
Jeffery
Jeffery Giesener
CEO/Founder
SourceMob.com
612-349-2740
Twitter: @sourcemob
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jefferyjeffgiesener